THE PRISONERdoctrine against which all the events o f the Revolution are
judged:
‘A ll men are equal and free: society, by nature and destination,
is therefore autonomous and ungovernable. If the sphere of
activity o f each citizen is determined by the natural division of
work and by the choice he makes o f a profession, if the social
functions are combined in such a way as to produce a harmonious
effect, order results from the free activity o f all men; there is no
government. Whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is an
usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.
‘But social physiology does not immediately allow that egali
tarian organisation; the idea of Providence, which was one o f the
first to appear in society, has been in opposition to it. Equality
comes to us by a succession o f tyrannies and governments, in
which liberty is continually at grips with absolutism, like Israel and
Jehovah. Thus equality is born continually for us out o f inequality;
liberty has government for its point o f departure... Authority
was the first social idea of the human race. And the second was to
work immediately for the abolition o f authority, each wishing
to use it as the instrument o f his liberty against the liberty of
others.’
In other words, Proudhon sees the Revolution as a dynamic
progress in which, balancing between the poles o f the parties,
society proceeds towards the final dynamic equilibrium o f anarchy.
It is from this point o f view that he makes his perceptive criticism
o f the revolutions o f 1789 and 1830 and, in much more detail,
that o f 1848, calling for a broadening o f the Democratic Socialist
movement so that it may become the ‘party o f liberty.’ In final
peroration, he breaks into a long rhapsody on the idea of Liberty
itself:
‘The principle o f the Revolution, we know it still, is Liberty,’
he declares. ‘Liberty! That is to say: x. political enfranchisement,
by the organisation o f universal suffrage, by the independent
centralisation o f social functions, by the incessant and perpetual
revision o f the Constitution; 2. industrial enfranchisement, by the
mutual guarantee o f credit and sale. In other words: no more
government o f man by man, by means o f the accumulation of
powers; no more exploitation o f man by man by means o f the
accumulation o f capital.’
And he ends in a curious invocation of the spirit of irony, which